The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 1, 1929-1940 (Vol. 1)

In his essay on the painter Jack Yeats, which he sent to Beckett in
1938, Thomas McGreevy wrote: ‘During the 20-odd years preceding 1916,
Jack Yeats filled a need that had become immediate in Ireland for the
first time in 300 years, the need of the people to feel that their own
life was being expressed in art.’[*] Beckett was in
Paris when he read the essay. He wrote to McGreevy to say that he did
‘not think there is a syllable that needs touching’ in the first 18
pages, and that the rest, ‘though I do not find it quite as
self-evident as the beginning, holds together perfectly’. But then he
said that ‘the political and social analyses are rather on the long
side.’ He admitted his own